


i am the one who's always been there

by statusquo_ergo



Series: it's not pain, it's just uncertainty [3]
Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Feelings Realization, M/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 02:07:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10295114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: Mike realizes that things have been building up for awhile.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt:
> 
> A marvey prompt: how about Mike thinking about everything Harvey has done over the years and suddenly realising that Harvey's in love with him

When Michael James Ross was eleven years old, he lost his parents to a car crash.

This isn’t a secret to anyone; the test isn’t who earns his trust enough to tell. No, the test is what they do with the information once they have it.

Usually, the answer is nothing. Usually, the answer is to tiptoe around him for a day or two and then ignore it completely, pretend he hasn’t told them, maybe forget about it altogether until the subject comes up by accident and then it’s more of an “Oh god Mike I’m so sorry, that was so stupid of me.”

Sometimes, the answer is “Oh, well, now I get it,” and what they mean is “Now I understand the way you are,” even though they don’t, because that’s a big part of the story but it’s not the whole thing, and on its own, it just floats in a sea of static.

There’s this one time that he tells someone and that’s nice but it’s just another piece of him, a thing that can be an asset (empathy) or a burden (too much) or a detail that’s good to know but doesn’t define Mike, might have shaped him in some ways but doesn’t make up the core of who he is (his own man).

Harvey Specter is a good person.

—

The secret is fun for a little while, when everything is so fresh and new that none of it seems real and surely this won’t last forever but let’s have fun while we’re here. Mike works as hard as he can and tries to exceed Harvey’s expectations, which he manages to do every now and again, and eventually the secret moves to the back of his mind; if he isn’t thinking about it, then surely no one else is, either, so they’re safe and it’s fine and don’t worry about a thing.

Then Jessica finds out.

Mike distracts himself from being terrified by submerging himself in work until he’s drowning, until he can barely breathe from the strain of it, pretending that feigning ignorance will somehow melt into maintaining the status quo; maybe he’ll lose any chance for advancement, but hey, that was never part of the deal to begin with, and he’s happy where he is.

Then everything really does go back to normal, and eventually Jessica even admits that he’s worth keeping around after all, and Mike remembers that he’s living in the most fucked-up fairy tale ever written but it’s also the best one he’s ever heard.

Much later, when he finds out that Harvey was the reason, he has to feign most of his surprise.

—

It was a mistake to leave Pearson Specter, but a mistake that needed to be made, like spending the week at a friend’s house after a bad fight with a roommate or significant other; Mike is sure there’s a flaw somewhere in that logic, but he’ll be damned if he can figure out where exactly.

It doesn’t feel so bad while he’s away, but then he goes up against Harvey, and oh, yeah, there it is.

A little while later, when Louis has gone behind Jessica’s back to re-hire him because he doesn’t know any better, Mike settles back into his role very carefully and resolves not to make that mistake again.

—

The thing about the secret is that once is was discovered for the first time, the idea that it might eventually destroy him stopped being a theory and started being a fact.

The thing about the two of them is that when you destroy one, you destroy the other.

Mike is mostly frustrated with Harvey’s efforts to take the fall for him, when the time comes to lay down their arms; it’s him, it was always going to be him, it _has_ to be him, can’t Harvey see that? After everything Harvey’s done for him, every jam he’s bailed him out of, how can he think that Mike would ever let anything happen to him that he could so easily prevent?

Lying on his threadbare cot in his tiny cell and cataloguing all the ways that he hadn’t expected prison to be so disgusting, because television and movies leave out the mold and the dead bugs and the leaking walls and ceilings, and they can’t really convey the pervasive stench of sweat and cheap cleanser, Mike remembers that Harvey volunteered to go to this place for him, to spend days and weeks and months in this hell so that Mike wouldn’t have to learn these things. Mike could have gone to his grave not knowing how to peel and slice five dozen potatoes in under an hour, or the spiteful satisfaction of “accidentally” walking off with another man’s unbroken shower sandals, or the quiet dread of those simple words, “The counselor wants to talk to you.”

It only takes a couple of days for Gallo to start speaking to him with extra maliciousness, a layer of anger over the vicious taunting that tells Mike that Someone must have said Something, and it doesn’t take a genius to reason who or what it might have been.

Harvey doesn’t mention it when he gets out. It’s okay; Mike knows.

He’d say “Thank you,” but he isn’t really sure what for, and he doesn’t want to give the wrong impression.

Anyway, the words are too small to encompass everything they’re supposed to mean.

—

The drop that makes the cup run over, as it were, isn’t the moment Mike gets into the Bar, the moment that all of the sacrifices and hard work, all the unabashed fraudulence and self-deluded justifications, all the years of stress and struggle and concern come to a head and turn out something “worth it.”

No, that drop comes early the next morning, when Mike wakes up to a brand new day and nothing is the way it was when he went to sleep.

Lying beside him, her tired eyes crinkled up at the corners, Rachel reaches slowly to stroke his hair; “You did it,” she murmurs happily, and he smiles and nods and—no.

No.

 _He_ didn’t.

 _They_ did.

 _Harvey_ did.

It’s always been Harvey, from the moment he stepped up to Mike’s stupid challenge— _I’ll become the best lawyer you’ve ever seen,_ as though Mike wasn’t asking him to set himself on fire for a stranger—to the moment he saved Trevor ( _he’s my oldest friend, Harvey_ ), the moment he rescued Mike from the Harvard Club ( _if I hadn’t paid him off, you’d be in jail right now_ ), the moment he threatened to beat up Tess’s husband for daring to lay a hand on him no matter what the circumstances ( _that’s not who I am_ ) and everything in between, it’s always been Harvey.

Harvey, who was willing to give up his license for Mike. Harvey, who was willing to sacrifice his dream, his senior partnership (well-deserved and hard-won), for Mike. Harvey, who was not only willing to do all that but tried so _desperately_ to make it happen when he couldn’t see any other way because this is Mike, Mike, it’s all for Mike.

It’s always been for Mike.

Today, Mike will walk into his office—Harvey’s old office—with the world laid out at his feet, every arrogant demand met and every lofty desire granted because Harvey was so pleased, so excited, so gratified that Mike is going back where he belongs, and he’ll prove his worth a dozen times over if that’s what it takes because it’s the least he can do for a man who loves him so much.

He does.

Holy shit.

“Mike?”

Rachel stands over him, buttoning her skirt along her hip and dangling a pair of glossy stilettos from her fingertips, and he looks up at her, flustered.

“You coming?”

_How can I?_

(How can you not?)

“Yeah,” he says, pushing the covers aside and stretching his arms overhead, “yeah, just gimme a sec.”

Smiling falteringly, she leaves the room; he hears a drawer open and close in the kitchen.

He’ll go about his day as though nothing has changed. As far as everyone else is concerned, nothing has, so it’ll be alright.

Everything will be alright.

—

Mike doesn’t keep his promise to himself.

He tries, god, he tries so hard; _be grateful, be grateful for what you have,_ over and over on a loop on the seventh track of his train of thought, the back of the line, but bumping up to six-five-four-three-two-one is that reminder, _he loves me,_ louder and louder and louder, _he loves me he loves me he loves me,_ over and over again.

He doesn’t mean to skip lunch; it just sort of happens.

At some point, day becomes night; Mike turns his desk lamp on when it’s too hard to read otherwise, realizing some time later that it’s gotten dark out.

“You coming?” Rachel asks sweetly, leaning against the doorframe with her coat hanging from her fingertips over her shoulder, and he looks up at her, startled.

“I wanna finish this before I go,” he says, seeing in her posture and her pursed lips that she’s going to offer to wait, to stay so they can go home together, which is the very last thing that should happen (track eight). “It’s gonna be awhile,” he finishes apologetically, and she nods, shrugging her arms through her coat sleeves.

“Don’t work too hard,” she teases, and he offers a weak smile as she walks away.

At some point, he’ll be the last one here.

A gentle knock at the door jerks him upright to stare at the offender—ha, offender. Right.

Harvey, of course.

“What’re you still doing here?” Mike asks, closing his laptop (“PSL PSL PSL,” reads the screensaver).

Harvey steps carefully inside, pacing around invisible landmines.

“I didn’t think they’d give you so much stuff for your first day back,” he says, and Mike smirks.

“You would know,” he retorts. “And, you didn’t, I was just…thinking.”

Harvey puts his hands in his pockets and raises his shoulders. “Everything okay?”

Sighing out through his nose, Mike folds his hands in front of his face and narrows his eyes at his desk.

Well, once the promise has been broken, there’s nowhere to go but down.

“Are you in love with me?”

A kinder man would have phrased it more delicately.

(To be fair, a kinder man wouldn’t be asking in the middle of the night when no one else is around.)

A wiser man would have refrained from asking at all.

(To be fair, a wiser man wouldn’t have found himself in this situation to begin with.)

Mike is neither.

Harvey looks him dead in the eye and clenches his jaw, a silent dare to keep talking, to push this further than it’s already gone.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Harvey purses his lips for a moment before he answers, gathering his thoughts.

“You know why.”

True enough.

“Why are you bringing this up now?”

Bracing his hands flat on his desk, Mike stands with his head hanging down and speaks to the floor underneath Harvey’s shoes.

“Would you believe I just figured it out?”

Harvey scoffs.

“Some genius you are.”

Mike chuckles quietly.

“Nothing has to change,” Harvey says after a beat. “This isn’t on you.”

“Uh, it kind of is,” Mike refutes, raising his gaze to Harvey’s face. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, it’s _mostly_ about me.”

“I mean you don’t have to do anything about it.”

Oh.

Oh, that.

Mike raps the side of his fist against the edge of his desk; a highlight reel of Mike and Harvey’s Greatest Hits scrolls through his brain on repeat as he gathers his nerve and braces for the worst.

“What if I wanted to?”

Harvey’s response is immediate and predictable:

“Mike, you’ve got Rachel.”

Mike is about to argue, the words on the tip of his tongue when he remembers how this must sound to Harvey; the wounds of his childhood cut deeper than he lets on, and he won’t break up a marriage, even an engagement, when he could suffer in silence instead.

“I would never cheat on her,” he says (and don’t forget that she did it first). “But, Harvey, I…”

“Don’t say it.”

Mike gapes at him. “Why not?”

Smirking, Harvey shakes his head. “Remember that part where I said nothing has to change?” He gestures to himself, ending with the blade of his hand resting against his sternum. “It’s all on this side of the table, Mike. Let’s keep it that way.”

It’s the ultimate out. Mike should take it, he knows he should; maintain the status quo, that’s what’s gotten us this far, that’s what’s gotten us everything we have, everything we are.

Bullshit.

“It’s not,” Mike corrects, and the sorrow in Harvey’s eyes splits him right down the middle. Stepping out from behind his desk, he stops a few feet away and feels suddenly weary, worn down and beaten.

(Is this what you’ve been living through?)

“You know what wears off?” he inquires. “Gratitude. Hero worship. Shock and awe. You know what doesn’t?”

Harvey glares at him, but speaks without fury. “It does.”

“Not this time.”

It’s written all over his face that Harvey still doesn’t believe it, or won’t, maybe, and Mike doesn’t know exactly why he keeps pressing but this is important, this is so important.

“You know all that time you spent saving my ass?” he asks. “All that time you spent looking out for me, protecting me, doing everything you could to help me? To make me happy? Well you know what I was doing?”

Harvey opens his mouth to reply, but no, that was a rhetorical question.

“I was trying to do the same for you, alright, I was doing everything I could to prove that you hadn’t made a mistake by hiring me, to prove that I could do you proud, to prove that I was _worthy_ of you. To prove that I could make _you_ happy, too.”

Mike hears himself, hears his voice ratchet up in a shallow slope until he’s nearly shouting, and he pulls himself back, getting his breathing back under control before his denouement.

“I was falling for you,” he admits. “I just…didn’t notice.”

Harvey pauses for a moment before he laughs quietly, rubbing between his eyebrows and looking away.

“You picked a hell of a time to figure it out.”

“We haven’t even set a date for the wedding yet.”

Then Harvey sighs, and Mike wonders if that was the wrong thing to say.

“Look,” he tries again, “I’m not asking you to take her place. I’m not asking you to marry me, or move in with me, or…get a dog with me.” Harvey scoffs, and Mike carries on more boldly than before:

“But if that’s really how you feel, and I’m telling you, this is how _I_ feel, then I think…we owe it to ourselves to try. I think this feels right to me, I think it’s the first thing that has in awhile.”

“After getting into the Bar.”

“Oh, no, that’s still way too surreal to be true.”

Harvey smiles softly, sliding his gaze sideways to Mike without facing him head-on just yet.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he confesses.

“Me neither,” Mike stage-whispers, and Harvey laughs again.

Squaring up, he turns to Mike and offers his hand.

“To trouble.”

Mike glances down perplexedly, then up at Harvey’s increasingly uncertain face.

(Fuck that.)

Wrapping his arms around Harvey’s shoulders, he cradles the back of his head and draws him in for the headiest first kiss he’s ever experienced; Harvey withdraws his arm from between them and brings it to rest on Mike’s back, closing his eyes and giving in like he’s been waiting for it.

Well, to be fair.

They come apart much more slowly than they came together, and Mike smirks.

“To trouble.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "I Am the One" from _Next to Normal_ (2008).


End file.
